Fiber-optic connection now across Bay Bridge

By JOY LA PRADE Star Democrat Business Editor

Published 8:00 pm, Thursday, October 8, 2009

EASTON The Maryland Broadband Cooperative's fiber-optic cable network on the Eastern Shore could be "lit" by the first quarter of next year, Scott Warner, a member of the cooperative's board of directors, told the Talbot County Economic Development Commission on Aug. 6.

The fiber-optic cable has been laid all the way across the Bay Bridge, and work crews currently are digging and laying fiber through Annapolis, Warner said. By next spring, the cable should reach Parole to hook in to the carrier hotel, the hub where major Internet service providers are located.

Additionally, construction is about to begin on a cable connection from the carrier hotel in Elkton down Maryland Route 213 to join the cable on U.S. Route 50. Once that connection is completed, it will provide a second fiber-optic link from the Eastern Shore to the western shore.

Once the network is completed, Warner said, it will greatly reduce the cost for Eastern Shore Internet service providers to send information over the Bay Bridge, but "a broadband network and getting high-speed Internet at your house are two different things," said Geoff Oxnam, spokesman for Easton Utilities and treasurer for the board of directors of the Maryland Broadband Cooperative.

Oxnam told the commission he was trying to "dispel a myth" about what the cooperative's project will mean for Eastern Shore residents.

Some people think the Shore is limited to slow, dial-up Internet connections, but "we've had high-speed Internet in Talbot County since 2000 or 2001," he said, noting that Easton Utilities was the first company on the Shore to introduce cable modems. Today, local residents can also get broadband from Internet service providers (ISPs) via DSL connections, wireless networks and air cards. But these services are mainly available in the area's population centers, leaving people in sparsely developed areas, especially along the waterfront, without access.

When the broadband network is completed, it won't necessarily bring high-speed Internet to these residents.

This, Oxnam explained, is because there are two main challenges when it comes to providing broadband access: The lack of a "backbone," and the cost of providing the "last mile" of service. The Maryland Broadband Cooperative solves one of those problems.

To connect their local customers to the Internet, ISPs such as Easton Utilities have to pay to link in step by step, much like driving along toll roads, Oxnam said. The new broadband network will eliminate those steps and create the "backbone" connection.

But it doesn't immediately solve the problem of how much it costs to bring that fiber optic network to rural customers.

"Somebody's going to have to subsidize it," Oxnam said.

In a follow-up interview, Oxnam explained there has to be 20 to 25 houses per square mile to offset the cost of installing fiber-optic infrastructure. Even as a nonprofit company, Easton Utilities can't afford to bring the cable to all Talbot County residents, he said.

"There are just places where it's too prohibitively expensive you'd never recover the cost of that infrastructure," he said.

The Maryland Broadband Cooperative is providing the first step as local ISPs try to figure out ways to get broadband connections for all their customers, Oxnam said, comparing it to an oil pipeline.

"They're bringing the big pipeline in, and Easton Utilities, etc., tap into it and deliver that service to their customers," Oxnam said. The broadband cooperative's "basic model is let's get this access to ISPs so they have improved reliability and the amount of bandwidth available at a reasonable cost, and they can go out and reach out to as many of their customers as they can get. That, in and of itself, does not solve the last-mile cost."

Easton Utilities is exploring ways to provide that last-mile service, Oxnam said. One solution it has developed is wireless service. For its wireless high-speed Internet service, Easton Utilities shoots a signal from a tower near its building to another beyond the range of the fiber optic cables. An antenna on that tower can then send the signal into individual homes. One of these networks has already been set up in Oxford, Oxnam said, and so many people signed up that Easton Utilities was able to drop the connection price.

The challenges to these wireless networks, however, are that there aren't many towers in Talbot County, and the wireless signal requires a direct line of sight if there are trees in your front yard, they block the connection.

Nevertheless, the wireless network "is one of the solutions that shows the greatest promise," Oxnam said.

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With the Maryland Broadband Cooperative providing the backbone network, Oxnam said, "it's up to us to find out how we can deal with our own last-mile issues that's a challenge."